curmudgeonly.

This week has been the kind that has put me through a metaphorical wringer, on repeat, and I’m frankly really glad it’s over. There’s something about this sludgy midwinter period every year that makes me want to be a hermit. Bears got it right, hibernating. Weirdly, when I’m not channeling my inner Miss Havisham, I want to do wild, irrational things to bust out of this rut. Write a book. Quit my job and travel the world. Hitch my star to some other wagon.

I vacillate wildly between being excruciatingly bored by my job and having days that make me want to silently cry with stress and frustration. On Tuesday, I went the entire day without more than five minutes of conversation. Headphones in, a steady flow of slow, mundane, mindless work. Great for my knowledge of current music, terrible for my data usage (sorry Dad). Wednesday, on the flip side, was the kind of day where I caught myself mumbling “ohmygodohmygodohmygod WHAT DID I DO!?” under my breath on more than one occasion, trying to fix a poorly-articulated issue for someone without even really knowing what the issue was. I inadvertently made it worse…twice…before finally finding my inner cool-as-a-cucumber problem-solver self and figuring it out, but the day left me tapped out in every way. 

Bottom line, I felt a little stuck at various points this week. Sometimes it seems like my world has gotten so incredibly small…my (admittedly spacious) cube at work, my apartment, my car. These spaces defined my January, and it felt like such a humdrum existence after the excitement and travel and hectic adventuresome fall and holiday season I had. I’ve been a little bit antisocial and a little bit lonely, and sometimes I don’t even know which I’m being and when.

I’m constantly thinking ahead…the next trip, the next friend to come to town, the next apartment. Even the next job, lately. Recruiters have been reaching out with some intriguing propositions (Chicago? Phoenix? Dallas? Baltimore?) and I am, for the first time in a long time, actually finding my interest piqued. Maybe the way my life feels small is making me want to do something big…to try a new place, new people, new job, new world, and see if in that world I find a whole new Lizzie. Who knows? Half this angst is simply midwinter, and the fact that I’m ready for something, anything, to happen.

Here’s to February and all the happiness it inevitably holds. BYE JANUARY. 

Winter: a trust exercise.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's official: I've survived my first official sidewalk wipeout of 2016. This morning at around 7:25 am, in my rush to get into work after a slower-than-expected commute, I hit a patch of black ice walking altogether too fast and ass-planted backwards right into the street. Casualties: my coffee (RIP), my dignity (or what was left of it, I suppose), and any shred of remaining patience for the bullshit that is a Minnesota winter. 

These days, it's cold in Minnesota...the kind of cold that sears the lungs and makes my eyes tear up from the wind. Walking to work this morning was an adventure...the pavement slick with the slightest dusting of snow and, underneath that,  ice, looking deceptively safe but secretly greasy like an oil slick. I'm not known for being graceful (see above), and the combination of Uggs and bad sidewalks just increases the adventure. Everyone seems a bit more sluggish, from the pigeons in the arcade outside work to my fellow commuters, heat cranked and windows frosty on the morning drive. 

And let's talk about those drives, shall we? I drive a Honda Civic, which actually handles better than my Bug or Corolla ever did. That said, I'm a ridiculously cautious driver in weather, especially on highway 94, and that can't be said about many others on the road with me. From the granny drivers going 10 when the roads really aren't that bad, to the scary semis that seem to think black ice is fictional like Santa Claus, I always feel like I'm taking my life in my hands when I get behind the wheel in snow. Honestly, I work from home as much as I can just to avoid it. 

It's so cold that I wake up with chapped lips and hands, and it's so dry that my nose bleeds when I blow it. All I want to do when I get home is curl up in my chair under a blanket, as close to the fire as possible. Or submerge myself in a bath, maybe, and soak and steam all the chill out of my bones that I can. I've been existing on soup and tea and oranges lately...the first two to warm myself up, and the third because citrus reminds me of warmer days and climates. 

I'm regaining the art of layering every day. Today, it's tights with leggings over them, ski socks in my boots, a dress and a sweater and a coat and mittens and a scarf and one of those hats with the giant pompoms on top. I feel bundled like "A Christmas Story," so stiff with layers that my normal posture and gait are changed, and still so cold on the bits of exposed flesh that, if I could, I would cover every inch but my eyes. It's so brutally cold when I get out of the car that the layers are the only thing that make the half-mile walk in tolerable...even if it means I start sweating and have to strip half of them off as soon as I get through the door at the office. These vacillations between hot and cold mean my toes are always icy, even under two or three layers. 

Essentially, winter is a trust exercise...like those forced bonding routines at camp, where you're supposed to just let yourself fall backward into someone else's arms, right? I always hated those; I'm not a naturally trusting person, and I fall enough of my own volition to make a planned fall seem even more absurd than it is. Winter's like that...Iknow it's just a part of it, and yet I have to take the stupid fall anyway.  Every day I trust that I'll stay on the road and on my feet, that frostbite and frozen eyelashes will stay at bay, and that, hopefully, eventually, it will warm up. 

a thirty-below thank you

The windchill in Minneapolis registered around thirty below this morning, and I went to Target without a coat. 

No, I'm not suicidal. No, my blood type isn't "antifreeze." I live in a building with underground heated parking, and it is worth every penny of rent I pay on days like this. 

I needed groceries and laundry detergent if my Sunday plans of tv and meal prep were going to pan out, but when I woke up to this, all I wanted to do was stay buried under the covers whimpering: 

That's ice INSIDE my windows. It's so cold the inside of my apartment is freezing. 

I feel like I can't really complain, given at this very moment there are thousands of people just a few miles away voluntarily watching the Vikings play the Seahawks outside at TCF Bank Stadium. Then again, that's their choice, and there are few things I like enough to be outside in weather like this for four minutes, much less four hours. 

Enter heated underground parking, at both my apartment and the downtown Target, and I was able to convince myself to gird my loins, put on pants that weren't flannel, and make a Target run. My car registered at a balmy 69 degrees when I started it in my apartment garage, and plummeted to -4 within about 3 minutes of being exposed to glacial tundra air. After about a half hour in Target, the car had warmed back up to 40 degrees when I made my exit to head home. No hat, scarf or mittens necessary: just two free hands to carry the groceries and a reminder that there are saving graces to this arctic weather. 

You know you're a Minnesotan when this is the stuff deemed fairy-tale blogworthy. That said, thank you, dear apartment complex, and thank you, downtown Target, for making this hellish polar vortex a little more tolerable. 

Off to brew yet another cup of tea and channel my inner Elsa...as much as I claim "the cold never bothered me anyway," we all know that's a lie. Here's to first-world luxuries and warmer days ahead! 

humidity/headaches

It’s humid in Minneapolis today, campers…the kind of humidity that you can taste as you inhale, heavy like soup in your lungs. The kind of humidity where my hair instantly spirals into total anarchy…tendrils of ringlet-y frizz halo out all over my head, and the only way to save the situation is just to twist it all up and stab a few bobby pins in it and hope for the best.

I woke up with a horrendous headache this morning, and I’m sitting in my cube debating the merits of more coffee versus more water and Excedrin versus just phoning it in on the whole healthy-eating thing to get a bagel sandwich from Bruegger’s. My eyes are doing that swimmy thing in my head where the whole world has squiggles in the periphery. If I didn’t have a 3pm meeting that I can’t miss, I’d peace the heck out of here and go lie down in bed…air conditioning blasting, blackout shades pulled down, “Frozen” on mute with the screen dimmed while I doze in and out.

I’m going home for dinner tonight and I can’t wait to see my parents and Jonathan. I’ve been promised Brussel sprouts in exchange for helping little bro revamp his LinkedIn, and it’s a good thing, because I happen to have the world’s most carefully put-together LinkedIn. My recruiters when I left EY commented repeatedly on that fact. Leave it to me to master all forms of social media, even the ones I don’t really need to be leveraging right now…

I forgot my umbrella at an event last night, so I set an alarm on my phone to call the place the minute it opens. It’s hilarious to me, this loss of an umbrella, because in Paris I smugly remained the only Schwegwoman who didn’t lose/suffer the theft of an umbrella. For me to forget it in my own neighborhood, basically, is tragicomedy of the first order.

This post is essentially pointless, but I’m feeling rambly and hoping that getting a few words out of my head will take the ache out of it too. This early-June Thursday feels like limbo to me. 

oh hello, spring.

Every year when spring comes to Minneapolis, I find myself instantly appreciating the littlest, most seemingly insignificant things so much. This year has proven no different, and I’m basically floating around in a haze of lilacs and fresh air and daydreams on a daily basis.

Speaking of those lilacs…what is it about lilacs in the rain that makes for the absolute best scent ever? Kaitlin and I kept commenting on it on our riverbank walk on Monday. Yesterday I left work in an absolute downpour, sans umbrella, of course, and in a terrible mood over that fact. The office parking lot, however, is bordered by a hundred-yard stretch of lilac bushes, all of which have burst into bloom over the last week or so, and that fragrance alone, tempered by the rain and just completely diffuse in the air, made me slow my pace in spite of the fact that I couldn’t see out of my glasses and my shoes were filling up with water.

I’ve been bitten by the spring cleaning bug HARD this season. Before Kait came to visit, I found myself fighting an uncontrollable urge to really deep-clean my apartment. I spent six hours one Sunday going over the place from top (washing the tops of my cabinets, I’m not even kidding) to bottom (scouring baseboards and washing the floors…twice…), even going so far as to enlist a friend to take apart my dishwasher so I could clean it most effectively. I’ve kept my windows open as often as the weather allows for, and the light and air streaming into an immaculate apartment makes me feel all Martha Stewart-y…in a good way.

My fingernails and toes have been pastel since March, and it’s felt like wishful thinking up until recently. My ballet flats and sandals are replacing my Uggs in the front of my closet, and the floaty skirts have made their glorious reappearance in my weekly work rotation. I’m also the proud owner of a pair of the prettiest petal-pink pants…breaking out the feminine, lightweight clothes has me even more focused on honing in on fitness, too, which is so necessary and so great.

One of my favorite things about my office is that I have a beautiful view of the Mississippi River out my window. All spring I’ve watched the trees on the river, waiting for that first faint flush of green to start creeping into all the gray of the winter landscape. It blows my mind how perceptible those changes actually are, watching the riverbanks come back to life after all the frost and ice vanish. Randomly, weirdly, it seems that every time I look out the window, I see a school bus crossing the High Bridge…bright and yellow, cheerful. Now I’m wondering if, with school letting out soon, my buses will stop crossing the bridge, and even just thinking about that makes me a bit nostalgic in advance for them.

This kind of weather, this change in the seasons, this growth and rejuvenation and starting over…this kind of weather makes me want to fall in love with everything and everyone.